


Strike Team Echo 00

by zombie_socks



Series: Strike Team Echo [1]
Category: Black Widow (Comics), Captain America (Comics), Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Comic Series, Depression, Language, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Strike Team Echo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-02 03:00:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6547930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zombie_socks/pseuds/zombie_socks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>SHIELD's gone. Fury's dead. And Clint Barton has been taken in for questioning. Sounds like a great way to spend a Friday night. </p><p>Issue 00 of the Strike Team Echo series, formally serving as its introduction. Plus, where Clint was during Winter Soldier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Strike Team Echo 00

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! I'm going to be your airline stewardess for a moment and walk you through some things. 
> 
> A few months ago I got the idea to write a series about Clint Barton and do exactly 3 things with it:   
> One, it was going to examine the idea of giving the regular guy super powers and the complications from that.   
> Two, it was going to feature him on a team of fellow super serum recipients.   
> Three, it was going to be treated like a comic book series. With that being said, this is issue 0. It's an introduction, a set up to the story, that while important, isn't where the "series" starts. But it will get you, dear readers, in the swing for how this is going to work. 
> 
> Like most comics, I'm going to release a 22 page issue once a month on a Wednesday. So, you know, add me to your virtual pull list.
> 
> Okay. Enjoy your flight.

NOW:

A normal person would have been freaked the fuck out. But between growing up in a circus, working for a secret spy organization for over a decade – nearly two – and fighting aliens in broad daylight directly after having a god in his brain, Clint Barton was fortunately and decidedly not normal.

He’d been in this particular predicament before: handcuffed to a table, armed guard at the door, two-way glass to the side. Yeah, not uncharted territory in the least. What was new, however, was the giant CIA logo on damn near everything. And he’d thought SHIELD had had a problem advertising their super secret agency. Then again, SHIELD no longer existed and the CIA wasn’t exactly a secret.

The door opened and a tall woman in military dress, blonde hair in a bun, heels clacking like fingernails tapping impatiently on a table top, strode into the room, a series of files tucked under her arm.

“Good evening, Mr. Barton,” she greeted. “I’m Agent Schleisman.” She smiled but had too tense and stern a tone to be considered delighted by his presence.

“Shouldn’t there be an agent in front of my name too?” Clint asked, looking up at her from his position tethered to the table. He really hated the feeling of steel around his wrists. Reminded him too much of a stint in prison before busting out and eventually getting his ass handed to him by Coulson in some warehouse in Chechnya.

“The agency you worked for no longer exists,” the woman clipped, taking a seat across from him. “And you can’t be an agent of nothing.”

Clint shrugged. “Could if you tried hard enough.”

She didn’t look pleased. She rubbed some hand sanitizer over her fingers and palms before opening up the first file. She scanned through it in irritating silence. Clint risked a glance up at the guy guarding the door. He was the physical embodiment of a brick wall.

“Do you know why you’re here?” Schleisman asked.

“Do any of us know why we’re here?” Clint tried. Schleisman glared.

But she disserved flippant and petulant behavior. They all did. A whole team of CIA agents storming his apartment like that. It was a damn good thing Simone and the kids weren’t there; probably have scared the poor things half to death. Then of course there was the whole being wrestled to the ground thing and having his hearing aids taken for “examination.” What the hell did they think? That he was somehow communicating with Fury’s ghost with them?

“You are here because you were found harboring the known fugitive The Winter Soldier.”

“Uh, slight correction there, Agent,” Clint interrupted. “I was letting my buddy James Buchanan Barnes crash on my couch.”

Agent Schleisman crossed her arms over her chest. “Is that your defense against aiding and abetting a traitor to the United States of America?”

“I thought Bucky Barnes was the hero. After all, the history books your department approves for printing declares him the loyal sidekick of Captain America and one who gave his life for this country.”

Schleisman blinked heavily, again unimpressed. “We’ve been searching for him for over a year. How on Earth did you find him?”

Clint looked down at the cuffs around his wrists, pulled on the connecting chain. “To be honest, Agent, he found me.”

 

THEN:

There were worse things than waking up bleeding in a dumpster. Not many, but Clint could think of a few. Based on experience, of course.

He could hear the sticky sinking of trash bags under his weight so at least his aids were in and working. And they were picking up grunts, groans, and other general sounds of fighting. Someone else was here. Someone was beating up the bad guys that had socked him in the nose and plunged him into the nearest trash receptacle. It was more than tempting to just let whoever it was take care of the mooks who’d been trying to sell coke in the alley next to his building to some kids. Well okay, probably more like teenagers. But young. Tweenagers? Was that a thing? He really needed to ask Kate. But Kate was gone, had returned to the West Coast after the whole run in with the Russian Track Suit Mafia. The apartment was depressingly empty now with Kate gone and Barn and the Simone gang gone and Lucky…gone too.

So maybe Clint had added a few rotations to his regularly scheduled building patrols. And maybe he’d been a little overzealous leaping from the fire escape in the dead of night to surprise the drug dealers – God, Nat would yell at him for sure about being so stupidly reckless. Then again, she was gone too. After SHIELD had collapsed she’d vanished into the wind. Clint knew where she was, or well, had a pretty good idea. But all he’d heard from her was a text saying all their covers had been blown and to lay low for a bit. Everyone from SHIELD had dropped off the radar. Fury was dead, Coulson was dead, Maria and Bobbi were missing, Nat was…wherever. If Stark wasn’t reportedly flying around the city in his suit every once in a while, Clint would’ve been convinced that he was the only SHIELD affiliate left in the world.

So he’d jumped and landed on a dealer, told the kids to scram, and then got sucker punched right in the snot locker.

And now someone was picking up where he’d left off. Or so it sounded like.

Mustering up his strength, Clint sat up and managed a peek over the top of the Dumpster. Sure enough, some dude in a ratty hoodie and baseball cap was beating the shit out of the dealers. Two were on the ground, unconscious by the look of it. Clint heard bone snap followed by pleading from the dealer currently dangling from the dude’s outstretched hand.

“Whoa, buddy, he gets it, okay?” Clint interjected from the Dumpster. Both the man and the dealer looked at him. “Don’t, you know, kill him.”

The guy, face concealed by the hood, didn’t let the dealer go. “He hurt you,” his voice grated out, sounding like the vocal equivalent of sandpaper being drug through gravel.

“Not the first time I’ve gotten a busted nose,” Clint reasoned, climbing from the Dumpster. God, he was going to need a shower.

“I know,” the guy answered. “Behind that diner in Brooklyn.”

“Uh…” Of all the places Clint had been beat up, behind a diner in Brooklyn wasn’t one of them.

“Please let me go, man,” the dealer pleaded.

The guy just tightened his grip on the dealer’s leg, giving him a shake in his upside-down position.

Clint squatted down to be more level with the dealer. “You take your goons and get the futz out of here. And you don’t come back. You hear me?”

The dealer nodded. Clint stood up. “You can let him go now.”

“But he hurt you.”

Clint narrowed his brows. “Did Nat send you?”

With his face in shadow from the alley walls and the hood and cap, Clint couldn’t see any features on the guy’s face. But the name seemed to make the man stiffen.

“I won’t come back. I promise,” the dealer squealed.

The man held the dealer up higher before letting him go, dropping the dealer on his head. He’d have a sore neck in the morning; that was for sure. The dealer scrambled off, not even bothering checking on his buddies.

It was a moment before the man asked, “You okay?”

Clint shrugged. “Nothing a good long shower won’t heal.” He turned to face the man, still not getting any read on the dude’s face. “Thanks.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Clint.”

The man bent his head as if looking at the offered hand. “No you’re not. Quit playing around. You know you shouldn’t be picking fights in alleys. I don’t care what they said. I thought we were past this.”

Clint slowly took back his hand. There was a lot in that rambling that didn’t make sense. Okay, none of it made sense. Maybe this guy had hit his head during the fight. And seeing as he’d saved his life, Clint only thought it fair to offer, “You wanna come up to my place? I’ve got bandages and stuff. You know, if you’re hurt or anything.” He leaned in to see if he could spot any blood. It was too damn dark, though, and the guy pulled away.    

“That nose ain’t gonna bandage itself,” the man answered instead.

Clint decided to take that as a yes and turned to take the back entrance into the building. The man followed him up to his place. With the lighting much better Clint could make out that his clothes were filthy and ragged. This guy hadn’t showered in days probably.

He opened the door to his apartment but the guy stopped short at the door and didn’t enter.

“Something wrong?” Clint asked.

The man didn’t answer, just stood there, filling the doorframe. He was tall, broad. He clearly could hold his own in a fight. Veteran maybe? Could be PTSD then, making his mind a little muddled.

“There’s a shower through there,” Clint directed. “Towels are in the closet next to it.”

“We need to get your nose fixed,” the man muttered. He took a step inside the apartment. “What’s with the purple?”

Clint bounced a shoulder, going for the med kit he kept in the kitchen. “I like purple.”

His aids didn’t pick it up clearly, but Clint could’ve sworn the man asked, “Since when?”

Clint wet a rag and went to start cleaning up the blood from his nose. He hissed in pain and that got the stranger’s attention. He rushed over, telling Clint to lean his head back. He took the rag from Clint’s hand and carefully dabbed at his wound.

But at that close the stranger’s identity was no longer a mystery. And if Clint had been far less shell shocked and not currently injured nor being treated by this man, he’d have had the sense to get a knife from the counter.

Because the guy currently dabbing a rag to his nose was The Winter Soldier.

“Wha…how?”

The Soldier smiled. “Punk,” he mumbled.

Clint stared at him, unmoving, unsure how to move. This was the very man that every agency in America was hunting, that had tried to kill Nat and Steve! And he was…tending to his nosebleed?

The Soldier took a step back. “This is where you say ‘jerk.’”

“Wha…Why?”

The Solider looked heartbroken at that and turned away to rinse out the rag. He turned off the faucet and sighed. “’Cause that’s what we do, Stevie.”

 

NOW:

“You expect us to believe he just showed up, made himself comfortable in your residence, and you just accepted that?” Schleisman accused, arms now resting on the table. A conscious choice to appear more open. Yeah, Clint knew that game.

“It wasn’t easy,” he answered. “First couple of days were rough. But as I’m sure you’ve read by now online, I’ve kind of done the whole Russian Assassin Rehab thing before.”

“You’re referring to your partner, Black Widow.”

“She has a name, you know.”

Schleisman didn’t acknowledge his statement. She flipped through her files until she found what she was looking for. “And what about your own rehabilitation?” She pulled out a piece of paper. “It says here you were diagnosed with clinical depression after the Battle of New York and put on probation.”

Fury had called it a “much deserved vacation.” Really that was just code for “you make everyone nervous with your existence and we all keep waiting for you to turn back into a mindless puppet and kill us all.” Clint narrowed his eyes, lowered his tone. “What about it?”

“That must’ve been quite the slap in the face,” the agent responded. “You put your life on the line fighting aliens in the streets, and yet they only see you as a threat. They kicked you out of the clubhouse, Barton, even after you more than earned your membership.”

She was leading him to something. Clint could feel the way her words were selective, aimed to get him to some predetermined point. But he’d played this game before and knew not to rise to the challenge.

He relaxed, took a breath and counted to five in his head as he’d been taught in the mandatory post-New York therapy sessions. “Fury owed me some time off. Thought it a good of time as any to take it.”

“And your partner didn’t take any time off with you?”

Definitely leading.

Clint shook his head. “Nah. Nat needs to stay busy. She goes a little stir crazy without a case to work.”

Schleisman wrote that down. “So in the time following the events of the Battle of New York, you left SHIELD, broke off your partnership, and turned up again harboring a known fugitive and Hydra’s most loyal assassin.”

There it was. And how insulting. “You think I’m Hydra?”

“Why shouldn’t we?”

“I’m not Hydra.”

 

THEN:

“I’m not Steve,” Clint replied softly, then immediately regretted it. If the Soldier thought he was his childhood best friend, he should’ve gone with it, as it might have been what was keeping him alive.

The Soldier turned to him, eyes wide. Then his face changed, started to look panicked. Clint figured he was coming to terms with where he really was. The Soldier took a step back, found himself up against the sink.

“You okay?” Clint inquired, leaning forward but keeping his distance. If he’d learned anything from bringing in Natasha all those years ago it was to never get too close.

“YA ne lyublyu fioletovyy,” the Soldier answered.

Barton understood enough Russian to know the word “purple” was in there. But, like, _what_? He took a step closer, cautious. The Soldier put up his arms to defend himself as a reflex.

“Hey, it’s okay. Not gonna hurt you. Just…”

Just what? This man tried to kill his best friend and his (technically) boss, and _did_ kill his (ex) boss. If SHIELD existed, Clint figured he’d be on the phone letting Fury himself know that the freaking Winter Soldier was in his kitchen. But there was no SHIELD and the last report of the Soldier had him supposedly pulling Cap out of the water. So maybe seeing his childhood best friend had jarred something loose. That could explain his earlier behavior of thinking Clint was Steve. Maybe the Solider was looking for his friend as much as Steve was looking for his.

But Clint got the feeling neither would find exactly what the other was looking for. Being frozen for seventy years and then having to cram seven decades of history and experience into one’s head overnight left them changed just as much as seventy years of brainwashing and unwanted kills.

 _Huh,_ Clint thought. “ _Minus the seventy years part and that’s starting to sound painfully familiar.”_

“You like poker?” Clint asked. It was one of the things he’d turned to in the time post-Loki. Of course it was mostly with Kate and they bet chores, pretzels, and once a movie marathon of the winner’s choosing (which is how Clint now knows far too much about some reality show called _Philadelphia Mamas_.) The familiarity of the cards in his hands had been something grounding, something he could trace back as far as his days in the circus. And those old memories kept him focused on where and when he was. No Loki, no aliens, no too blue eyes. Just him, cards, and the drone of the TV buzzing in his hearing aids.

The Solider didn’t answer but Clint moved to get a deck of cards from the junk drawer anyway. “Five card draw or what?”

“Is this how you kill your targets?” the Soldier muttered.

Clint scoffed. “Hell no. Too close and would take too long.” He rummaged through the drawer then popped his head up. “Wait. How did you…?”

“Purple. You were the purple one in New York. The archer who worked with Natalia.”

Whoa, there was a lot to unpack in that. A lot. Too much really for coming off of an alley fight and the sudden appearance of the Winter Soldier into his living room. He really should have fought or called it in or something. But the guy hadn’t hurt anyone (who didn’t deserve it) and just looked so rumpled and lost and…like Clint did two years ago after New York.

“The Avenger,” the Soldier added needlessly.

Clint waved him off and dug out the cards. But his mind was arguing with the title. _Not sure I really count as one of those. You talk to any family member of one the agents I killed under Loki’s control and they’d tell you: I’m not an Avenger._

 

NOW:

“I’m not Hydra!” Screw relaxation and calming deep breaths. If his hands weren’t cuffed to the damn table, Clint would’ve beat the shit out of the agent across from him.

“And you want to know why?” he went on, “because I was recruited by the president of the Captain America Fan Club. Phil Coulson would never have given me so much as a dying breath before he’d have ended me if he thought for one moment that I was fucking Hydra.”

“Phil Coulson is dead,” the agent countered. She checked her paperwork. “And reports have it being related to your attack on the Helicarrier.” She stared him down. “Doesn’t play well that you killed off your only defense.”

She wanted a rise out of him. And damn her, she got one.

Clint launched himself at her, going only as far as his handcuffed wrists would let him. Agent Schleisman didn’t even blink.

_Red Flag._

“Settle down, Mr. Barton,” she ordered. “We’re only trying to get to the bottom of this.”    

“The bottom of what? I’m _not_ Hydra. What do you think my plan was? To get hired by SHIELD, act like a brat, get sent to kill Nat and instead…” _Oh shit._

The agent smiled plainly. “You can see where this looks bad.”

Clint shook his head vehemently. “I’m not Hydra. And you know why? Because if you’re going to infiltrate a place, you play the part of the good little solider, okay. You don’t rebel against them. You don’t go rogue on missions and bring in strays; you play the perfect little spy.”

Schleisman didn’t bat an eye.

_Double red flag._

“And what does that make you, Barton? Because from where I’m standing you’re the worst spy I’ve ever seen. You’re hot tempered, wear your emotions on your sleeve. Not to mention you were embarrassingly easy to capture-”

“-You guys threw flash grenades and stormed my building with assault rifles at three AM-“

“-And let’s not even talk about how terrible of a liar you are.” She pulled out a paper from yet another file. “Remember this.”

Like he could forget his arrest record from when he’d lifted that car as a teen.

“You got six months, Barton. You got caught and couldn’t worm your way out of it.” She leaned in. “I bet your brother could’ve.”

Barney had been in army by that point and she knew it. “Maybe I was tired of lying. You think of that? Maybe I wanted to be caught so I’d have a fucking place to live, get a decent meal once in while.”

Truth.

“And this?” she inquired taking out another paper. It was a medical report from a mission that had gone south back in his early SHIELD days. He’d been captured and tortured. His cover had been solid but it was his first undercover gig and he’d flubbed on a piece of his made-up history. They’d seen the lie.

“Rookie mistake. I learned from it. Believe me. Coulson ran me through the ringer like five times a day for that one.”

Truth.

“Then how about this?” she questioned, removing a slim stack from the files and spreading the few pages out. The handful of missions where he’d gotten caught. Though, to be fair, Coulson knew he was more assassin than spy. And he’d gotten out relatively clean with the mission complete so…

“You’re the worst spy I’ve ever seen, Barton.”

Her eyes flickered slightly towards the two-way glass to the side of the room. A signal? Maybe. Or maybe a give-away? Either way, time to get to work.

“All the more reason for Hydra _not_ to hire me.” Clint leaned in, taking Schleisman’s eyes off the files as he maneuvered a paperclip from one. “You said it yourself. I’m a shitty liar. And you’re not the first person to tell me that. But have you ever considered that maybe, just maybe…-”

_Click_

_“-_ that’s the lie.”

He shoved the table towards her, catching her off guard. With his wrists freed he jumped up onto the table and used it as leverage to throw himself on the guard by the door. He got control of his gun hand easily and with the stock of it, knocked the guy unconscious. He shot the security camera and used the ejected shell casing to lodge into the handle of the door, jamming it.

Agent Schleisman attacked him from behind, running her arms up under his and jamming her knee into Clint’s back, right in the kidney. Clint let out a groan, but tossed her off balance and threw her to the ground.

She grabbed onto his ankle and yanked, but Clint went with the movement, turned it into a roll, and came up on the other side of the agent just as she too got to her feet. She lunged at him, aiming for his ribs with the flat of her hand, but Clint caught her wrist, spun her around, and slammed her head into the wall, using her momentum against her. Schleisman crumbled to the ground, disoriented.

Clint took that moment to finish removing his handcuffs and slapped them around her wrists, stringing the chain around the leg of the table.

“Let me tell you something about myself, Agent Schleisman,” Clint stated, settling on his haunches in front of her. “A lot of people who’ve read my file assume I learned to lie with the special forces, or maybe – if they’ve gone back far enough – guess that it was at the circus. But it goes further than that.”

The agent looked pissed, her jaw twitching. That caught Clint’s attention. He shot out a hand and roughly gripped her jaw, holding it open.

“Relax,” he told her, “just playing a hunch.”

Schleisman tried to snarl, but didn’t accomplish it very well.

Clint continued, “See, my dad was a monster.” He tightened his hold on her lower jaw to prevent her from biting him. “Beat the shit out of my brother and me. ‘Couse that was only when he wasn’t beating on my mom. Now, that’s where the privilege few who know that part of my life assume I learned to lie. That I would fib and tell stories to stay out of his way.” He felt it, a tiny little capsule on her rear left molar. “But no. I learned to lie from my mother. Because every day she’d put on a little more make up, try a little harder to smile, and tell me and brother _every single day_ ,” he pulled the capsule from her mouth, ignoring her cry of pain, “that everything was okay.”

He brought the capsule into the light and saw the raised design printed into the plastic. “I lived a lie for years.” He held up the cyanide capsule for Schleisman to see, hand still harshly grabbing her jaw. “Just like you’ve been.” He leaned in. “Future reference, when someone talks about misbehaving in an agency as normal, maybe don’t sit stone still. Okay. Kind of a tip off.”

He crushed the capsule under his boot and stared her down. “Hail fucking Hydra.” He punched her face, knocking out the agent.

The sound of banging on the other side of the interrogation room door caught his attention.

Clint took the guard’s gun from the ground, aimed it at the door, ready to take out numerous forces behind it.

But then another sound entered the mix and he spared a second to turn up the volume on his hearing aids. It was metallic. A kind of _SPRANG_ that reverberated off the walls of the hallway outside.

“Wait a second,” Clint muttered to himself. “I know that sound…”

 

THEN:

It had been about a week since James had inadvertently moved in. The guy crashed on the couch every night, so what was Clint going to do? Asking him to leave seemed cruel. Especially since more than one neighbor had asked about the screaming coming from his apartment. He’d had needed clarification because the whole not being able to hear thing meant he hadn’t noticed the guy’s nightmares. Clint had explained it away as a friend who’d come back from military service. The PTSD thing didn’t seem like too much of a lie anyway.

So The Winter Soldier was couch surfing and Clint knew that should bother him. But so far James had just sat there lost and confused, slipping in and out of the present. He kept asking Clint who he was, calling him Steve more often than not.

And then there were the quirks. Like how James sometimes got stuck in a foreign language, or recited the menu from Denny’s in alphabetical order, or hacked a Russian satellite from Clint’s crappy computer, or vanished for a few hours one day to come back with library books on world cuisine and proceeding to make the dishes. But it was when Clint woke up to Barnes standing over his bed, knife in hand (though not aimed at him) that the quirks finally got him feeling a bit nervous. He knew he should’ve been freaked the fuck out, but what did it matter if Barnes killed him. SHIELD was gone leaving him basically unemployed. Everyone he knew was dead or flying under the radar. Hydra was supposedly after him. If Barnes considered him a target all of the sudden, Clint just hoped it was quick.

“You okay?” Clint asked, voice mumbled with sleep as he slipped in his hearing aids.

“Woke up with it in my hand,” James whispered. He held the knife out to Clint. “I don’t know how it got there.”

Clint reached for it carefully. It was a knife from his kitchen. “You sleep walking now?”

James shrugged. He stood there stock still for a long time. Clint set the knife on the table next to his bed and sat up more fully.

 _Dog bowl_ , James signed suddenly.

Clint stared at him. James hadn’t signed anything in the week he’d been there. And what the hell was that even supposed to mean?

 _Tell me about the dog,_ he tried to clarify. He sat down cautiously on the floor next to Clint’s bed, propped his head up on his hand, elbow resting on his knee like a child. It threw a warning about his potential state of mind.

“Where are you right now, James?” Clint asked. If he was expecting some story from the 40s, Clint was in trouble.

“Brooklyn, Stevie. Where else would we be?”

_Well shit._

Clint took in a breath. When it had been Natasha all those years ago who’d been lost on her time and place, he’d pulled her gently towards the future by insisting she was safe at SHIELD. Now there was no SHIELD, there was no safety. And at three AM Clint didn’t feel much like fighting. So he began a story about Lucky, hoping it would satisfy Barnes.

It did in a way. He cut Clint off halfway through and said he didn’t remember it that way. Blinked one, twice, then, “You watched the footage from the bridge in DC?”

Clint nodded after a moment of catching up.

“I watched it too.” He stood up, picked up his knife, and left. Clint got up to follow him, but James returned, Clint’s laptop in his hand. “It’s 2015. I’m in Bed-Stuy. You’re Clint,” he stated somewhat robotically. He handed the laptop to Clint with the video cued up. James hit the spacebar and the footage SHIELD had recovered from various street cameras and cell phones played. To the tune of knives and bullets hitting Steve’s shield, James finished, “And I’m a monster.”

A hollow _SPANG_ echoed from the screen in the following silence.

 

NOW:

The metallic rattle of the outside door handle falling off resonated on the hard floor out in the hallway behind the door. A half second later the door swung open and Clint raised the gun in his hands, prepared to take a shot if need be. But there he stood, all red, white, and blue glory, the icon, the idol of Phil’s life. And behind him was the last person Clint was expecting.

“Tasha?” he barely whispered.

“We’ve got Barton,” Cap announced into a hidden comm unit. His eyes drifted over to the guard and agent on the ground. “See you figured out they weren’t CIA.”

Clint scoffed. “Surprisingly I’m not an idiot, Cap.”

Nat’s eyes softened a degree even though she kept them trained on the hall, her twin Walther PPKs at the ready, aimed on both sides of the hallway. “Don’t believe him, Steve,” she quipped. “I’ve literally seen him eat dog food.”

Clint scooped up the guard’s machine gun and pulled the clips off the guard’s slumped form in the hallway. “That was one time, Nat, I was drunk, and let’s be fair they were too damn close to beef jerky to count.”

Steve shrugged. “Sure I ate worse in the war.”

Clint huffed, joining Nat in the hall. “Or maybe that soda bread you and Bucky tried to make when you were ten.”

Nat shot him a look just as Steve was suddenly crowded in his space. “Wha… how?”

Without warning, Clint found himself up against the wall, Steve’s panicked and confused face in front of his. “Where is he, Clint?”

“I don’t-”

“Please just tell me where he is!”

Clint wasn’t sure if Steve was aware at how tight he was really grabbing him, but damn there were going to be bruises.

“Steve, this isn’t the mission,” Nat tried, attempting to placate the situation while keeping her eyes sharp for any approach of more Hydra agents.

“I don’t know, Steve,” Clint tried again, pouring honesty into his gaze, shifting ever so slightly to try and loosen the larger man’s grip. “But he’s here. They brought him in.”

Steve dropped him immediately and picked up his shield, anchoring it to his forearm. “Then I’ll find him.”

“Steve, we don’t have time. Fury-”

“Can go suck it-” Steve spat at the same time Clint exclaimed, “Fury’s alive?”

The sound of approaching boots entered the hallway.

“We need to move,” Nat ordered.

“I’m not leaving without Bucky,” Steve insisted.

“Nat,” Clint breathed. She spared him a glance, read his look like an open book. Her eyes answered _later._ She shook her head and touched her ear, gun never leaving her hand. “Hill. Change in plan. We’ll make our own extraction.” She clicked off the comm.

Steve turned to Clint. “Any idea where they’d put him?”

Clint finished collecting clips off the fallen guards. “They had me in a containment cell on the fourth floor. It’s a long shot but…”

“It’s the only lead we have. C’mon.” He started down the hall followed by Clint and Nat brought up the rear, not liking the shadows that were starting to round the corner.

“If this doesn’t kill us,” she started low, “then remind me to shoot both of you.”

 

THEN:

It was a bad day. Clint had been having more and more of those since he’d stopped seeing his SHIELD appointed psychiatrist due to there being no more SHIELD to appoint anything. He reluctantly took the last two little blue pills from the orangey bottle with his name on it. He’d been trying to ration his meds until either SHIELD came back or he finally got the gumption to go see a doc on his own.

He heard a scream from the living room and dashed out to find James sitting bolt upright on the couch, presumably waking up from a nightmare. Such things had a pesky tendency to ruin naps.

“You okay?” he asked.

James didn’t answer and instead ran towards the kitchen, jerking the newspaper off the counter. But he stopped and stared at it as if seeing it for the first time. “You used to put newspaper in your shoes ‘cause they were too big,” he muttered.

Clint frowned and shoved his hands in his pockets. He really couldn’t deal with this today. “That was Steve, James. Not me.”

James looked up and blinked a few times. A slow, sad smile came to his face. “No. You went barefoot.”

Clint raised a brow. “How did you know?”

James didn’t answer and instead set the newspaper back down. “Hydra made me go barefoot too.”

 

NOW:

Clint knew he shouldn’t be happy to see bloody footprints on the hallway of the fourth floor. But the fact that the blood was coming from Hydra bodies and flowed away from an open containment cell at least gave the illusion that James had gotten out.

The hall was mostly dark, only the emergency lights on, and even they were flickering. It all had a horror movie vibe to it that Clint couldn’t shake. He kept waiting for the inevitable jump scare.

Natasha had a flashlight out and balanced in her hand under her gun. Clint’s sharp eyes followed the beam as it illuminated swaths of the hallway at a time. A gentle sobbing came from a little further down and the footprints got sloppier. The light followed them until bare toes could just been seen then slowly Nat moved the light up.

James was hunkered over at the corner of a wall where the hallway turned, his hair hanging in his face, a piece of jagged metal in his hands.

“Bucky?” Steve breathed beside Clint. He took off, dropping his shield with a rattling clatter.

“Steve, wait!” Nat tried to caution. But Steve was over by his once-best friend in a heartbeat, sinking down to the wild man’s level.

“It’s me, Buck.” He reached out carefully, taking heed of James’ wide eyes. “Do you remember me?”

James’ gaze flittered up to Clint and Nat before he narrowed it. Clint reached over carefully and placed a hand on Nat’s getting her to lower her gun. She glared at him, the flashlight making her features look sharp and alien from its underlighting.

“It’s me, Bucky,” Steve tried again, scooting minutely closer.

A sharp intake of breath. Then, “Stevie?”

Steve let out a relieved if not kind of teary laugh. “Yeah, Buck. It’s me. It’s Stevie.”

James seemed to have to take that in a moment before looking over Steve’s shoulder. “They took my shoes, Clint,” he called.

Nat whispered, “That became protocol after he killed a guy with the laces once.”

“S’why they took your ballet shoes after practice too,” Clint reminded her. He took a step forward. “Hey, James. We need to get out of here. Okay? You think you can walk?”

James looked to Steve who offered out his arms more than willingly. Steve propped him up with an arm wrapped around his waist. It was then that he noticed the metal appendage missing. Hydra no doubt took that too.

It was slow going down the hall, stopping at every juncture to check if the coast was clear. Nat and Clint efficiently dealt with any instance that arose. The Hydra base seemed to be pretty tapped out which didn’t surprise Natasha. It had been a hastily assembled station once Clint and Bucky’s positions had been found. She’d staked it out easily with Sam two days before Hydra had gone after Clint and The Winter Soldier.

Steve helped Bucky into the backseat of a car that had been left on the outskirts of the base. Nat hotwired it while Clint took shotgun.

“Where are we going?” Clint asked once they were on the road. Steve was gently stroking Bucky’s hair in the backseat in a way that shouldn’t have looked as peaceful as it did. This was a trained assassin and America’s Greatest Hero. And yet they looked like…dare Clint say lovers?

“Fury’s set up a base. It’s a bit of a drive,” Nat responded. She didn’t take her eyes off the road.

Clint scoffed and looked out the window. “So Fury’s not dead _and_ he’s rebuilding SHIELD. All without tell me. Perfect.”

Nat swallowed hard. “We had to be sure.”

Clint turned on her. “Sure? What the fuck, Nat? Sure of what?”

“You _were_ harboring Hydra’s greatest asset.”

“You knew where he was?” Steve asked flabbergasted from the backseat. Nat glanced at him in the rearview mirror.

Clint shook his head. “You’re really not going to say it, are you?” he challenged Nat.

She bit her lip.

Clint leaned over and stomped his foot on the brake, ignoring Nat’s complains and Steve’s yelling.

“Clint what the?-”

“Out,” he ordered Nat, opening his own door. He met her at the hood of the car, grateful that Rogers had taken the hint to stay in the car. “Say it. Say it to my face, Nat.”

She crossed her arms. “Clint.”

“You thought I was Hydra.”

She looked down at the ground. It was worse than hearing her say the words. That break in eye contact hurt more than any torture Hydra could ever concoct.

“Really?” he went on. “Me?”

“Fury wanted proof that-”

“I don’t give a damn about Fury, Nat. I asked if _you_ thought I was Hydra.”

She still didn’t look up. But after a moment she breathed, “I didn’t want to believe it, Clint. Fury kept saying we had to be certain. How could I ever be certain about that? Not when I didn’t know who I could trust. Not when everything, everyone I knew was suddenly…gone.”

He huffed. “You weren’t the only one.”

She looked up then, eyes open and vulnerable for the first time in a long time. He hadn’t seen them that wide since the night he’d made a different call. “I’m sorry,” she tried. “Clint, I-”

He put his hand up to stop her. He didn’t want to hear her apology just yet, not when it wouldn’t mean anything. It was a while before he sighed heavily and said, “Someone once said it was nothing we were ever trained for.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Guess that applies to all this too, huh?”

She gave a tiny grin.

Clint sighed again, rubbed the back of his neck. “Besides, you showed up when I needed you the most.” He followed it with a tight smile, one that was meant to move on and work on the forgiving end of things. But she’d take it and returned one that was similar.

James was out cold in the backseat, his head on Steve’s lap when they got back to the car. Nat had left the engine running and put the car into drive before telling Clint to go ahead and get some sleep.

He didn’t mean to doze off, but having no idea where he’d been or what time it had been or anything to serve as a guide except the constant rumbling of tires on road, it didn’t take long for him to fall asleep. It didn’t stop the jarring effect of waking up to it being night in the middle of what looked like the dessert.

“I’m going to assume we didn’t leave from New York,” he mumbled, sitting up straighter in the passenger seat. Steve and Bucky were leaning on each other in the back.

Nat shook her head. “Hydra had you in a remote, temporary base in Kansas.”

“Still looks a long ways away from Kansas.”

Nat turned up a road and Clint got a terrible sensation of déjà vu. “Wait a second.” He looked at the familiar stretch of road, could see the repairs. His skin was positively crawling by the time they got to the outside gate and sign announcing the Joint Dark Energy Mission. “Son of a bitch,” he muttered.

“I was going to tell you,” Nat tried, handing a badge to the agent working the gate.

Clint frowned as they passed through. “Well I’ve got to hand it to Fury. If I was going to rebuild SHIELD, this is definitely the last place I’d look.” A half-built satellite dish passed by out the window. Clint tried not to think about how he was responsible. His mind replayed the sound of the portal collapsing and taking the base with it. Loki had laughed.

Nat parked the car in a pseudo parking lot. A man Clint kind of recognized from news reports and rescued SHIELD files greeted them.

“Hey, Sam,” Steve greeted.

But Sam’s eyes were the size of silver dollars as Steve helped Bucky from the backseat. “You found him?”

Steve nodded. Nat interrupted saying, “Fury will want to process him.” She gently touched Steve’s arm. “He’s been through a lot, Steve. This is a precaution, that’s all.”

Steve looked a little peeved but seemed to understand. Sam slipped automatically under Bucky’s arm while Steve braced him up on the other side, arm around waist.

Nat watched them go a few steps before turning to Clint. “Fury wants to see you, too.”

Clint rolled his eyes. “He better have an apology on his lips.”

“Don’t count on it,” Nat grinned. She bumped into his shoulder. “Missed you.”

He didn’t get a chance to reply as she went after Steve and Bucky.

It didn’t take long to find Fury’s office. Other than Hill, who had the official office since apparently she’d taken over creating the new “public” SHIELD, it was the only room with a desk. The man himself was seated behind the structure, examining one of the many files on his desk.

Clint knocked on the doorjamb. “You wanted to see me, Sir?”

Fury looked up. God, he looked old. And it almost broke Clint’s heart to see him so weighted down.

“Glad you could join us, Barton.”

“What can I say, Fury,” he started, coming into the room and taking a seat, “I guess my invitation got lost in the mail. Course that could’ve had something to do with there being no return address.”

Fury leaned back in his chair, folding his hands over his stomach. “You understand we had to take precautions.”

Clint frowned. “Understand? Yeah. I’ve worked with you long enough to get it, Nick. But c’mon. Me? Of all people? Hydra?”

Fury scowled. “You were housing the Winter Soldier.”

Clint bobbed a shoulder. “To be honest I liked finally having company. Got a little bored without my partner, my protégé, my brother, my dog, hell even my ex-wife.”

Nick might have smirked. “I have to admit I kept waiting for you to move.”

Clint waved it off. “If Hydra was after me they’d have found me on the road the same as at home. At least I had a decent DVR and bed at home. Not to mention the home field advantage.”

Fury leaned forward. “Yes. That served you so well when Hydra raided the building.”

Clint bowed his head. He didn’t like admitting he’d been taken by surprise. And since the raid it’d only been one surprise after another. He cleared his throat, changing the subject. “I like what you’ve done with the place. It’s very shabby chic.”

Nick shook his head. “It’s a start.” He stood up and walked over to file cabinet and opened the middle drawer. “One I’m hoping you’ll help continue.” He pulled out a file and handed it off to Clint.

“What’s this?” Barton asked, opening up the manila folder labeled: STRIKE TEAM: ECHO.

“Your first assignment with SHIELD.” Fury sat back down, single-eye gaze intense as he leveled it on Clint. “The real SHIELD.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> I promise there will be more Stucky later. I promise there will be a lot more answers and explanation later too. Like what's up with Nat, what's going on at this new SHIELD, will Hydra ever learn to stop underestimating the people it captures? 
> 
> Again, THIS IS JUST A SET UP TO THE SERIES. 
> 
> Thank you all for reading! :)


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